Schumacher laps up the plaudits

October 2000, the end of an era. Twenty-one years of breast-beating, an age of annually donning the sackcloth and ashes of missed opportunity and false expectation are wiped out in just over an hour and a half. Two decades of longing are washed away in a crimson tide of breathtaking, heart-stopping skill. Michael Schumacher, operating in the outer reaches of a racing stratosphere where others simply can't exist, takes Ferrari's first drivers' World Championship since Jody Scheckter last made the Maranello bells toll in 1979.

For the faithful a moment to wallow in, but even for the neutrals Suzuka 2000 was just right. The right man, the right team, the right time. If it had been Eddie Irvine in '99, it would have had the hollow ring of flim-flam. A confidence trick orchestrated in a Paris courtroom, it would have had the look of the court jester donning the crown of the rightful heir. This year the heavens were aligned and it was never going to be any other way.

From the start it was all about Schumacher and Ferrari. Challenges came and went and reappeared but it was only ever about whether Ferrari would once again lose what was there for the taking.

He started taking in Melbourne as both McLarens blew up before half distance. He did it again in Brazil, slotting in between the two McLarens in qualifying, dismissing them before the first turn and then counting out the laps as Mika Hakkinen's engine again expired and David Coulthard trailed in behind him only to be later disqualified for a technical infringement. San Marino opened the gap further, Schumacher leading his rivals home comfortably. But the McLarens had their first points and Schumacher's march was faltering.

At a sodden Silverstone, Schumacher hauled himself onto the podium, but only to stare up at Hakkinen and Coulthard. Two weeks later Hakkinen took his first nervous win in Spain. Schumacher could only take two points. Split by a suspension failure in Monaco that saw Coulthard strengthen his challenge, Schumacher reversed the rot with victories at the Nurburgring and the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, but then came collapse. An engine failure in France, and two race-ending shunts at the starts of the Austrian and German grands prix saw Schumacher suddenly embroiled in an unlikely four-way fight for the title, Rubens Barrichello joining the fray after sealing a hugely emotional maiden win at the German Grand Prix. Hakkinen seized the initiative, claiming wins in Hungary and Belgium that all but cracked Coulthard's nerve.

Schumacher, though, is made of sterner stuff, or so it seemed. After a tragic second corner accident at Monza, Schumacher took the chequered flag, pushed himself back into the title frame and broke down in the post-race press conference. By Indianapolis, though, he was done with tears and strolled to an inaugural win at the newly-built circuit. From two points adrift of Hakkinen after Monza he was now eight points to the good. He could win it in Japan. As the lights went down at the start, he lit up in pole position. But he was matched in brilliance by Hakkinen. For 53 laps they collided like superheated particles in the narrow space between seconds, beyond the ken of the 20 others in their way. It was a gargantuan race. While 2000 was the unfolding of a seemingly simple drama told by just two central characters, it was played out against a backdrop of myriad sideshows and subplots which held a fascination, some painful, some pleasurable.

The collapse of Jordan's challenge on the upper strata of Formula One society was a tale of social climbing gone awry. Outfitted in Mike Gascoyne's runway couture and bound up in risky engineering corsetry to hide a bloated Mugen-Honda shaped figure, Jordan's EJ10 dropped its aitches and stopped too often to make any claim to the laurel-wreathed salons inhabited by Ferrari and McLaren. In the end, a hapless Heinz Harald Frentzen and a cruelly luckless Jarno Trulli limped the outwardly lovely but inwardly unkempt Jordan to a constructors' sixth, behind Honda rivals BAR and a resurgent Williams.

It was also the year a kid with a name straight from pages of a comic strip of the gentleman racer age showed that sometimes fables do come true. From the moment Jenson Button fired up his Williams FW22 it became apparent he was mentally 10 years older than his Britney Spears fixation suggested. His 12 championship points kept Benetton at bay and helped Williams into third position. There was also Jaguar's internally fuelled annus horribilis, BAR's increasingly chilly relationship with Honda, and Arrows' emergence as a potential force on the back of massive sponsorship. There were any number of tales.

But they were always pale worlds revolving around the bright sun of Ferrari and McLaren. The season yielded not only episodic tales of intrigue and rivalry but also a central drama as compelling as any in sport, a drama that after 32 weeks, 16 races and 14 countries exorcised demons that have haunted a small corner of northern Italy for 21 years. And when the Maranello church bells rang out in celebration of that holy moment a million crimson-tinged hearts lifted.